Oslo Airport had one of the largest duty free areas I’ve seen in a long time. It was very crowded too, with passengers trailing cases and carrying overflowing baskets.
I found it difficult to walk through and it was a completely wasted few minutes, that I could have spent much better.
It’s all totally pointless, as if duty-free was banned on flights and passengers bought their duty free as they arrived in a country, airlines wouldn’t waste fuel flying all that useless junk around the skies.
I wonder how much duty free contributes to global warming?
The EU should make it the law, that every airport has a by-pass for those, who don’t want to buy any duty-free.
And was there anything to eat that was gluten-free in the airport? I didn’t see anything that was!
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September 11, 2013
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel, World | Airports, Global Warming/Zero-Carbon, Norway, Oslo, Sweden's Mammals |
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I’ve just read this article in Airport World, which makes an impressive argument for a new four-runway London Airport in the Thames Estuary.
It just strengthens my belief that before we decide on the route of HS2, we must first decide what we are doing to create more runway capacity in the South East.
July 6, 2013
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Airports, High Speed Two, Trains |
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The Standard is reporting tonight, that Lord Mandelson has changed his mind over the building of HS2. Here’s a flavour.
In an extraordinary public U-turn, he confessed the costings were “almost entirely speculative” when Gordon Brown’s Cabinet backed the idea.
Ministers wanted a “bold commitment to modernisation” after the financial crash, he said, and ignored the potential risks of what now looked like “an expensive mistake”.
But then as Gordon Brown didn’t have the financial acumen to run a whelk stall, what do you expect?
I’ve always been slightly cynical about HS2 and feel if it ever gets built, it won’t be as is now envisaged.
But one thought struck me, as I read the article and it gave rise to the title of this post.
My background is in Project Management, which is all about getting things build the right way and in the correct order. Judging by all the arguments about how Heathrow Airport will link in to HS2, it struck me as strange that we are deciding the route of HS2 before we decide if we’re going to build a new airport for London.
Look at any option, with the possible exception of a third runway at Heathrow and we’ll have to revamp the railways around London, to create links to the North.
Strangely in a few years time, when the Midland Main Line is electrified, Sheffield will have the best links to a London airport, of any northern city. I suspect they’ll be running trains from Sheffield to Brighton, which of course will stop at Gatwick.
That just shows how well politicians plan transport networks.
They haven’t really done anything to solve the North-South problems we currently have and what will happen to construction methods in the near future.
HS2 is initially planned to go from London to Birmingham, but that route has one high speed 200 kph line and a convenient slower one. As I found last week, when I went to Birmingham, it’s a good service and a lot of the problems are on their way to being solved. I wonder what amount of traffic, an upgraded and electrified Chiltern Main Line could carry, thus delaying the need for HS2 to Birmingham!
But go North from Birmingham to Manchester, Liverpool and ultimately Scotland and there is a real lack of capacity. Admittedly, Virgin’s lengthened trains and a few new ones will help, but that line will probably be the first part of the West Coast Main Line to get totally overloaded.
So perhaps we should build it from North to South as some have proposed.
A very real problem is the cess-pit at the London end of the line; Euston. It was built on the cheap in the 1960s and needs a complete rebuild. Rebuilding Euston and building HS2 at the same time, would be a recipe for disaster.
And then there’s the problem of freight capacity, which is going to get worse, as some idiot decided to build the UK’s largest container port at London Gateway, in a place which is difficult to get to by rail,as most trains will have to fight their way through London. You could argue that the proposal to run freight trains on the old Grand Central Line by a company called Central Railway, should have been built as a freight spine first.
Building this line, would probably have taken a lot of the freight off the West Coast Main Line, so giving us the extra passenger capacity we need, at least as far as Manchester and Liverpool for a few years.
As with many things in Project Management, you don’t let politicians be involved in the design or choose the order you do something!
I always remember the building of the Lewisham Extension of the Docklands Light Railway. The contractors were told it had to link various holes in the ground and cost under a certain amount. The politicians then stood back and it was delivered on time at an acceptable price. Not like the Jubilee Line Extension, which was built at a similar time and suffered endless interference from politicians.
One of my laws of project management states that the more political or board level interference in a project, the later and more costly the project will be. If however those at the top lay down a feasible specification with rigid time and cost limits, the project will more likely be delivered successfully.
July 3, 2013
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Airports, Freight, High Speed Two, Politics, Project Management, Trains |
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Every so often a series of amusing letters appears in The Times.
Yesterday, they were talking about people holding up signs to greet relatives at airports. This absolute gem was posted.
As a tender-hearted mother I have driven many miles to collect my sons from far-flung airports at all hours. It is a small compensation to take with me a large greeting sign, often along the lines of “Nude Cyclists for Jesus Convention” or similar. It amuses me.
I can’t see C or most of the mothers I know, ever putting up a sign like that for one of their children.
On the other hand, the letter writer seems to be my kind of lady, as I like to think I don’t do boring either, and C stated many times, that she married me, because she knew life wouldn’t be boring.
May 30, 2013
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel, World | Airports, Children, Newspaper, Relationships |
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It is reported in the Sunday Times under the headline, Steeper descents to cut jet noise, that the National Air Traffic Service are looking at getting aircraft to fly steeper descents into London’s airports, to reduce noise. They already fly into London City airport at a angle of 5.5% as opposed to the 3% at all other airports. As a former pilot, who used to be an avid reader of the aviation press, I seem to remember too that the separation at US airports, was less than that in the rest of the world.
As planes these days are effectively very accurately flown by computer with the pilot only there to push the buttons and if anything goes wrong, surely we could squeeze more flights into an airport like Heathrow.
The problem is that you might get nearly twice the flights over your house, but the total noise you’d experience would be the same or slightly less.
How people would react I do not know. I don’t get many flights over my house, but on a clear day, I notice most of them! Not that they are particularly annoying.
December 9, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Airports, Flying, Heathrow Airport |
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This story from the Cambridge Evening News shows how a lot of good thinking is going into sorting out London’s airport problem.
Extending Crossrail to Stansted would be a simple addition to London’s infrastructure and because of the link at Farringdon station, London’s three main airports would be well-connected.
November 30, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
News, Transport/Travel | Airports, Crossrail, Trains |
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We’ve had proposals from Gatwick and Stansted in recent weeks, so now Luton has joined the fray with this proposal.
I’m sure Lorraine Chase will be pleased.
In some ways though building a major airport at Luton does make sense.
- The train lines will be good to London, the North, the East Midlands and the South Coast.
- The airport will be just off the M1 and could easily be linked to the A1.
I doubt there are many people, who think that Bedfordshire is a county with any great landscape, that wouldn’t be improved by a well-designed airport. It also seems to have produced a lot of writers, but few artists, which probably says they had nothing to draw.
October 24, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Airports, archit, Flying |
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Yesterday, I was on a 45 bus going up Farringdon Road, just west of the station and took these pictures.
There does seem to be quite a few sites to develop hotels around the important Central London transport interchange, that Farringdon station will become, as I proposed in my post about London’s Airports.
May 16, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
Transport/Travel | Airports, Farringdon Station, Hotel, Stations, Trains |
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You don’t have to wait long before a story about London’s airports comes about. Today, there’s story about a protest from the people of Kent about the Mayor of London’s support for an airport in the Thames Estuary.
They protestors actually recommend the following ideas.
- A high speed rail link between Gatwick and Heathrow.
- Improved rail connections to other regional airports.
- A second runway at Gatwick after 2019.
- Development of other regional airports, like Manston and Lydd.
This I suppose is something as usually protestors are very negative.
I should say that although, I don’t do it now, I’ve flown many times over Kent in a light aircraft and it is actually surprising how much green space there is. Now, I’m not saying we concrete it all over, but how many of those who fought the Channel Tunnel Rail Link or the M2 and M20, ten or so years ago, are still fighting them. I think this shows, that if you build rail and road links sympathetically, you actually get people on your side, as they are the ones that often benefit most from the new links.
So let’s look at their proposals in turn.
1. The Gatwick to Heathrow Rail Link
Heathrow is supposed to be on a spur to the new HS2 line from London to Birmingham. But why can’t the spur go right under Heathrow and on to Gatwick? Thoughts on the subject by civil servants are here in the Telegraph.
Thinking even more radically, you might even start HS2 at some point on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and then it could encircle London to the South West with stations at Gatwick, Woking and Heathrow.
One of the great advantages of a Gatwick to Heathrow link is that you separate London bound passengers from those, who are not going to the capital or even taking a connecting flight.
2. Improved Connections to Other Regional Airports
Once we have completed Thameslink and Crossrail, a lot of this will have been established. Journeys between airports like Gatwick and Luton, Heathrow and Southend will be no changes or just one. Even Gatwick to Heathrow will only be one change at Farringdon station.
In fact, will these two modern railways, with big trains revolutionise the way people travel through London.
Imagine, you are a businessman travelling from say San Francisco to Qatar. American Airlines seems to book you via London, where you change planes. You might find after an eleven hour or more flight, that staying in a good hotel in the centre of the best city in the world is a good alternative to carrying on. After all even now Gatwick to Farringdon is just 40 mins and Heathrow to Farringdon is quoted as 30 mins on the Crossrail site, when that line opens.
So could this simple route via Farringdon, demolish the case for a high-speed rail link between Gatwick and Heathrow? It certainly will for those, who can afford to spend a night in a good London hotel or want to stay over. Farringdon is of course a short taxi ride or a one-stop train journey from most main line terminal stations.
One of the things that would make Farringdon a better interchange is some more hotels in the area. But even so, it’s not a bad location for a transport interchange. It’s also next to the wife market in Smithfield and on a more legal level from the best of London’s lawyers.
So perhaps we’ve got the CrossRail/Thameslink railways right
3. A second runway at Gatwick after 2019
I used to fly a lot and was an avid reader of Flight International. Years ago, an airline pilot proposed building a second runway at Gatwick, by building over the M23 and putting that in a tunnel underneath. The runway would have been North-South, which is an unusual direction for the UK, but would only have been used for take-off in a southerly direction.
He had a point and it shows how if you think radically, you may come up with better solutions.
But in my mind Gatwick is the place to put extra runway capacity in the South-East of England. Flights tend to avoid flying over the capital and the rail links, when they are finished will be good.
4. Development of other regional airports, like Manston and Lydd
It’s interesting to see the people of Kent wanting to take their share of the development. I suppose they understand the benefits a large airport will bring.
Manston airport could be easily connected to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link and as it has a long runway. But that’s about it. Financially, it has always been a failure, but it is there for things like maintenance and freight.
Lydd airport is one of those places that grew up after the Second World War to serve a short-hop-to-France market. It does a bit more now, but would not be an airport of my choice.
However saying that about Lydd, over the previous few months, Southend airport has been developed from a small field to a proper airport, with easyJet as an operator. It has a rail link to Liverpool Street station in London, which takes about 50 minutes. But Southend has quite a large catchment area including East London, Chelmsford, Colchester and Ipswich, with good rail and road links. To a certain extent, it will take business from Stansted.
In fact you can now see a pattern developing of London’s airports. The two big ones; Heathrow and Gatwick are badly placed and you wouldn’t put them there now, but remember, the capacity will rise as more and more airlines use larger and larger aircraft at these airports. I can see a time, when these airports completely ban 737’s and the like. I’ve just found, that you can fly Heathrow to Paris in a small Airbus 319. Surely, we need to improve the rail links, so more passengers take the train.
Around these two large airports, a ring of smaller ones is developing.
- Stansted, which is big enough to take long-haul, is still considered a low-cost airline airport
- Luton, which is very much a low-cost airline and charter airport
- City, which is an ideally placed short-haul business airport
- Southend, which is developing into another low-cost airline airport
What is missing, is a low-cost airline airport, or even a business airport like City to the west, with good quick connections to Heathrow. A third shorter runway at Heathrow might have worked for the latter.
I think though on balance, that we shouldn’t take any serious decisions about expanding Heathrow or replacing it with an airport in the Thames Estuary, until CrossRail and Thameslink are fulkly operational and the plans for HS2 are finalised.
May 12, 2012
Posted by AnonW |
News, Transport/Travel | Airports, Crossrail, Flying, Gatwick Airport, Heathrow Airport, High Speed Two, King's Cross Station, St. Pancras Station, Trains |
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The Anonymous Widower 